"copy doesn't copy directory structures, it will only copy the files, hence the error message you're encountering. To do a deep copy such as this you can enlist either the tar command and use the construct tar cvf - --files-from=... | (cd /home/tmp/test/files/; tar xvf -) or you can just use rsync."

That's so much better..

The issue in the question is that the person has expanded, into the cp command line, a bunch of full paths, effectively like "cp a/b/c/file1 a/b/d/file2 .... dest" and wants those relative paths to be re-created under dest as dest/a/b/c/file1 and so on. Indeed, cp does not do that; it simply puts the specified objects file1 file2 ... into dest.

An option to create each object's relative path under dest would be useful, but it would be a pretty awful default behavior.

GNU cp has this option:

  `--parents'
     Form the name of each destination file by appending to the target
     directory a slash and the specified name of the source file.  The
     last argument given to `cp' must be the name of an existing
     directory.  For example, the command:

          cp --parents a/b/c existing_dir

     copies the file `a/b/c' to `existing_dir/a/b/c', creating any
     missing intermediate directories.